The Marauder's Map

They chose chairs near the back of the classroom in their first lesson of the day, History of Magic. Professor Binns was already in there, floating behind his desk with a blank expression. When everyone had come in, he immediately started lecturing them on the history of the International Statute of Secrecy, without even collecting in their holiday homework, which Hermione looked distinctly annoyed about. Harry glanced sideways at James, who wasn't even keeping up the pretence of taking notes, preferring instead to use the period as a method of catching up on some sleep and not even noticing the cross looks from Hermione that this earned him. Near the end of the lesson, however, he stayed awake, looking more and more apprehensive at the thought of Snape teaching him. He even snapped at Hermione when she started admonishing him for not taking notes ("What's the point, it's all in our text book anyway"). When the lesson finally ended, he packed up his books, and followed Harry out of the classroom in silence.

Snape was not in the classroom when they entered it, and they sat at the back, James sitting between Harry and Hermione. They only had to wait a few moments, though, as Snape swept in a few moments later. He did not need to call for quiet, which had fallen as soon as the class had heard the door closed. Harry looked apprehensively at James, expecting Snape to start finding excuses to take points off immediately, but strangely enough, Snape started with a reminder that their OWLs will be in June, and that he would only take the very best into his NEWT class. His gaze swept around the classroom, lingering on Neville. He avoided looking over in Harry and James's direction at all.

He set them to work mixing up the Draught of Peace. It was a complicated potion, but Harry could not direct his full attention to it; he was concentrating on Snape, who seemed to be avoiding them. Was he planning something? What was he going to do?

He glanced down at his own potion, which was issuing copious amounts of grey steam. Snape glimpsed it, and looked as though he was going to come over and criticise; but thought better of it. He was staying at least ten foot away from them, Harry noticed, and had deliberately avoided looking at James the whole lesson, despite James looking like he was having nearly as much trouble with his potion as Harry was. How long was this situation going to last? Could Snape avoid them the whole year? Harry hoped he could; compared to what he usually had to put up with in Snape's lessons, ignoring him was quite an improvement.

Ignoring them, however, didn't seem to make him avoid the other Gryffindors, and he spent most of the lesson tormenting Neville, expunging his potion every five minutes and forcing him to do it again until he got it right. Indeed, he seemed to be getting into a progressively worse mood as the lesson wore on. James glanced at Harry, but Harry didn't dare speak, in case they drew Snape's attention to them. By the end of the lesson, Snape seemed so angry, and they both thought it safer to ask Hermione to take their potion samples and put them onto Snape's desk for marking, in the middle of a group of Slytherins' potions, so that Snape couldn't see whose was whose. Snape looked incensed, but still resolutely refused to even look at them. They filed out of the classroom in silence.

Once they were well on their way to the North Tower, Harry thought it safe to speak to James. "That was so weird! Usually he can't keep himself from using me as an excuse to take points of Gryffindor, but today it was like we didn't even exist to him."

James could only shrug, as they climbed up the ladder to the North Tower. He looked around in amazement at the perfumed fire, red drapery, and the little purple pouffes and cushions arranged around the low tables. "This is divination? What kind of professor teaches like this?"

"You'll see soon," Ron whispered. "She's a complete fraud. Just make up loads of depressing predictions to keep her happy."

"Good day," said a misty, dreamy voice from behind them. Professor Trelawney was laying out a stack of leather-bound books on the tables. Harry, James and Ron chose a table as far away form the fire as possible, and looked at the books whilst waiting for everyone else to file in through the trapdoor. They had the word 'The Dream Oracle' in flowery handwriting on the spine, and sure enough, Professor Trelawney announced that the would be doing dream interpretation. Harry paired up with James, leaving Ron with Neville.

"So, what did you dream about?" Harry asked James.

James was silent for a moment. He seemed to be debating whether to answer.

"Lily," he said.

Harry was silent. He knew he could not say anything to empathise with James - he had never felt what it would be like to wake up one day and be told that someone you were in love with has been does for fourteen years.

All he could do was to be there, as a silent reminder to James that he was their son.

James looked at him, and suddenly shook himself. "I - I'm sorry, I shouldn't have said..."

"It's OK, Prongs. It's OK."

James looked up in surprise at being addressed by the name which had only been used by the rest of the Marauder's before, but smiled.

After Divination, they met up with Hermione for lunch, and wandered over to the Defence against the Dark Arts corridor half an hour early. James walked into their classroom. He seemed to be reminiscing.

"I had Defence in here in my third year, when we changed teachers. We did this amazing prank on the new professor. Remus thought it up."

"Go on," Ron encouraged.

"When the classroom was empty, we drew a visum line between his desk and the students desks, and Remus did an obfirmo charm on it to lock the view into place from the teacher's side, and put a one-way silencing charm on it. So when the teacher came in all he could see was what was visible when we drew the line, a load of empty desks. So he just sat at his desk and started marking, waiting for everyone to turn up. It took him half the lesson to realise that everyone was already here. It was hilarious."

There was a strange glint in Harry's eye. "Do you think Remus will remember it?"

James caught on. "Only one way to find out." He grinned, but Hermione frowned.

"You can't do that to a professor."

"Why not?" James asked.

"Because... it's not right. We'd get into trouble."

James looked annoyed. "You've got no sense of humour. I bet you've never broken a rule in your life."

Ron interrupted, looking indignant. "She's probably broken more rules than you ever did."

"Oh yeah? For instance?"

"When did you first use Polyjuice potion to spy on the Slytherins? We did it in the second year. That was Hermione's idea."

"We never needed to, we were clever enough to spy on them in other ways," James shot back.

Ron looked smug. "When did you first discover a secret chamber underneath the school? Hermione worked that out, too."

"We discovered loads of secret passageways."

"QED."

James looked very annoyed, but suddenly smirked, and addressed Hermione. "So you'll have no problem with pulling pranks on teachers, then."

There was a moment of silence, and then everyone burst out laughing. "I'll take that as a 'no', then!" James called over the laughter.

He set about tracing the line with his wand, curving at round when he got near the door, and muttered a few charms when he'd finished. "There, perfect. Just how Remus did it. We'll be able to see him, but he won't be able to see us."

They didn't have long to wait, as the rest of their class started filing in bit by bit, oblivious to the visum line. When all the students were sitting down, Harry saw Professor Lupin come in, glance at the 'empty' classroom with raised eyebrows, shrug, and sit down at his desk. The rest of their class, who had been taught by him two years earlier, looked surprised that he didn't acknowledge them, but none of them seemed to want to go up and ask him why. This was the first class that he had taught them where they knew he was a werewolf.

"Great way to get out of learning anything, isn't it?" James whispered to Harry, so that the rest of the class wouldn't hear. "Pity it only works once."

After about five minutes, Professor Lupin looked up again, frowning. "He's starting to worry why no-one's here," James whispered. The professor got up to his desk, walked over to the door, and looked outside. He turned back, and started walking to the fireplace at the back of the classroom, crossing the line as he did.

The moment he'd crossed the line, he stopped. Surprisingly, his face was expressionless as he looked around the classroom, until his gaze alighted on James, and a very slight smile alighted upon his features, all but invisible if you were not watching for it.

He pointed his wand at the general direction of the line, muttered a few words under his breath, walked back to the front of the classroom, and addressed the now rather puzzled students.

"I apologise for that. I will be teaching you Defence Against the Dark Arts again this year, and as you all know, I am a werewolf. Since some of you may be concerned about this, I have decided to start this year by giving you a few lessons about them, to remedy the rather... biased teaching I understand you received at one point last year, under Professor Snape.

"Now, who can tell me what a werewolf is?"

Harry and James didn't answer any of Professor Lupin's questions, preferring to leave them to the other students. Suprisingly, Hermione also didn't, but that was mainly because she was taking such comprehensive notes that they may as well have been a transcript of the lesson.

They lingered behind after the lesson, and sure enough, Professor Lupin walked in front of the door before they could walk out. He opened his mouth to say something, but before he could, Harry, James and Ron burst out laughing. Hermione allowed a slight smile to creep onto her features.

"You can't even recognise your own prank, Moony!" James said through the laughter. "That was the first one you thought up. You're losing your touch!"

Remus looked resigned. "OK, OK, I get the picture. But don't try anything like that again, OK?"

Harry straightened up, looking innocently up at Professor Lupin. "Us? Why would we ever do anything like that?"

Remus suddenly grinned, and turned to James. "You're corrupting them, James! We're going to have the neo-marauders around here before long!"

"What makes you think that wasn't the idea?" James shot back, smirking. Remus rolled his eyes, and walked out without another word.

They looked at each other. Harry cleared his throat. "Why don't we get the ingredients of the animagus potion? If it takes two weeks to brew..." He trailed off. The others nodded. "To the library, then!"

They passed the staff room on the way down. James glanced at Harry. "If Dumbledore knows about the mirror, it's not going to be much use, is it?"

Harry nodded, and after checking that it was empty, darted in, took off the charms and retrieved the mirror. He shrunk it, put it into his pocket, and hurried off after Ron and Hermione.

Once in the library, James found the book almost immediately; to Harry's surprise, it wasn't in the restricted section. He asked James about it.

"We do animagi in the third year, so it's available to anyone to study," he answered.

They chose a table near the back, and opened the book, flicking through until they got to the potion, which was near the back. Hermione studied it carefully.

"The only thing in here that's not in the students' cupboards is a boomslang pod, but they've got a jar of those on the shelf behind Snape's desk in our classroom. I saw it last time we were there. Should we get it now? He'll be in his quarters for most of the time. It'd be easy just to go down there now and whilst we're getting the rest of the ingredients out of the students' cupboards, levitate a couple down when he's not in there. I'd like to start the potion as soon as possible."

Harry shrugged, and nodded his head. They checked the book out of the library, and trooped off down to the dungeons, Hermione telling James about Myrtle's bathroom, where they'd brewed the Polyjuice potion. James was just agreeing that this would be the best place to make this one as they entered the dungeons.

Unfortunately, it was not empty. Malfoy was in there, reading something on Snape's desk. As the four walked in, he looked up, and leered at them.

"Well, well, well, if it isn't the new kid," he smirked. He turned to Harry. "I think you were better off when you had no family, don't you, Potter? Thank God your parents snuffed it before they had a chance to make any more..."

He didn't get any further. There was a bright flash, and he found himself pinned half way up the front wall of the dungeon, above the door. James had his wand pointing straight at his throat.

Harry had stepped back. He silently berated himself: he should have told James to just ignore Malfoy. He had gotten used to Malfoy's snide comments, but James hadn't. But even as he looked on, he realised that this would not have made any difference. James had a look in his eyes that Harry had never seen before.

Malfoy snarled, and tried to reach for his wand on the ground, only succeeding in tipping himself upside-down, so that his robes fell over his head. He struggled, but could not get out of this position, settling instead for shouting though his robes.

"How dare you... When my father finds out about this..."

James looked enraged; he flicked his wand again and muttered, "Petrificus Totalus!" and Snape's mouth slammed shut, his arms and legs snapping to his side. This succeeded only in making his robes fall down even further, revealing his underpants.

Hermione frowned in disgust at this, and looked at James. "You'd better let him down now," she muttered, looking worried.

"Let him down? After what he said to Harry? You're bloody joking."

"I'm serious - you could get into really big trouble for this - he says that sort of thing all the time, you've just got to ignore him..."

"Hermione, don't make me hex you too!"

"Let him down, then!" Hermione saw that James wasn't going to, and tried a different tactic. "He's not worth it, James, really he's not. He's - he's just Slytherin trash, they're not worth the effort."

This reasoning at last seemed to get through to James. He reluctantly muttered the counter-curse, and Malfoy fell to the ground with a loud thump, upside-down and crumpled in a heap. James shot a dirty look at him. "We haven't finished this, Malfoy. You're just lucky Hermione was here this time..."

Then, two things happened at once. The dungeon door opened silently behind Malfoy to reveal Snape, holding his wand. Harry and James went white. Malfoy appeared not to have noticed, however; his eyes were still shooting daggers at James, as he replied to James's last comment. "I don't need help from filthy little Mudbloods like her!"

There was a long silence. Snape still seemed to be taking in the situation; Malfoy upside-down in a heap at his feet and his last remark to James, and James himself still holding his wand at Malfoy, as though frozen by Snape when he had walked into the room. There was a funny look in Snape's eyes, as though this was a nightmare that he had been having that he had just been played out in reality. Slowly, however, as they focused on James with an intensity Harry had not thought possible, appeared a look that Harry had seen all too often; only this time it was worse, a thousand times worse. It was pure, undiluted hatred.

"Come with me, Potter."